Like my colleagues, I am afraid I have some criticism to offer. While I feel that the Department is a very necessary one, I think it is not doing its work in the way a Department should. There is too much irritation being caused amongst the public. As Deputy Esmonde said, there are too many Orders which are not explained thoroughly to the people. I am looking at the matter rather from the point of view of the country districts than that of Dublin. There is a sheaf of Orders issued every week affecting prices. As the Minister knows, there are thousands of small shops throughout the country, many of which might be called huckster shops, the owners of which have not got much education. They do not even see the daily papers, although sometimes they may see a weekly paper. It is impossible for them to follow the various changes in prices or other matters. Yet they are treated in the same way as the big business man who knows his business. I can quite understand that the Minister cannot differentiate, that he has to deal with the country as a whole. But, in dealing with the country as a whole, I am afraid that he or his Department has not gone thoroughly into the matter. I know they have a difficult job, but I do not believe they have gone into the matter thoroughly.
Take, for instance, the question of tea. Nearly three years ago the Minister told people to buy in all the supplies they possibly could. I think he started with flour, but in a general statement which he made, he included everything. The result was that those with any money bought in tea—especially shopkeepers. There were a number of small shopkeepers depending upon wholesalers for a supply of tea who eventually did not get any tea at all. Transport was restricted, and an excuse was provided for vans to go off the road. These people eventually did buy tea in some way or other, and perhaps they did charge a little over and above the fixed price. When the Minister brought in the rationing scheme, shopkeepers were told to supply a certain quantity of tea to their customers, and they were allowed a certain percentage of their former supplies. What happened in connection with that is that some cute business people refused to take tea rationing cards from former customers while drawing their percentage of tea. It should be easy to find out through the system of registration whether a man who was drawing his percentage of tea had a sufficient number of customers to cover that quantity. That matter was never looked into. In a good many cases people, especially poor people, were left without their supply of tea, because a number of these shopkeepers did not accept any cards from their former customers, although they got their supply of tea. It is not for me to tell the Minister how they disposed of that tea. Even at the present time I am sure that could be discovered by the Department.
In the case of the small shops and the huckster shops throughout the country to which I have referred, they got their supplies in a rather haphazard manner from vans and kept no account of what they had been getting. They might get five pounds of tea and a few hundred cigarettes, as well as other things, at a time. When the vans went off the road these people were left practically without any supplies. They did everything they possibly could to try to eke out an existence. If they got a few pounds of tea, they might perhaps have charged a little more than the fixed price for it. For a long time these small shopkeepers had supplied the people in their district as well as they could, and the people were glad to be able to get the supplies locally.
Now the Minister is driving these people out of business and compelling them to seek home assistance or some other means of support, while he is driving their former customers into the multiple shops. I believe that the Minister was ill-advised three years ago when, instead of trying to conserve supplies in the big wholesale places or taking charge of them himself, he told people to buy all they could.
At present I understand that in my county there are many prosecutions pending in connection with these Orders. One thing I have to complain of is that these cases have been pending so long. In some cases, at any rate, the people themselves would prefer that the prosecutions would be gone on with at once. Goods are seized, a man is put into prison for a night or two, and then let out. Surely, these cases should be gone on with. For months now these people have been kept in a state of suspense. It is very hard to understand what the reason is, why a man's goods should be seized, the man himself arrested, and three months afterwards the prosecution should still be pending. When an offence is committed the matter should not be left over for months, keeping the person concerned in a state of suspense as to what will happen in the future.
The Minister has controlled prices. He has, after some time, allowed a little more profit on tea and some other things, but he has not left to the ordinary shopkeepers the profit that should be left to them. I expect he has controlled prices on the basis of the turnover of the big business man in Dublin or the big towns. He has not taken into account the ordinary shopkeeper doing a small business. It was always the custom in the country to have a big profit on tea. There is very little profit on sugar.
The Minister did not take that into account. He cut profits to the minimum on which a big business could live but on which the small business could not exist. It is difficult to understand why the Minister did that because I am sure it is not the intention to put 50 per cent. of the people in small towns and in rural Ireland out of business and to drive the people into the multiple shops. In fact, the actions of the Department bear that appearance. That would never have occurred if, as I said, the Minister had insisted, when he started rationing, that every shopkeeper should register his former customers.
Another matter to which I wish to refer is cigarettes. We have through the country a terrible outcry, especially in backward areas that had been supplied by vans, that there is not a cigarette to be had. Small shopkeepers in those areas cannot get cigarettes because no van goes into the area. I must pay tribute to the National Wholesale Association of Tobacco Distributors who are doing their best in the matter. The Minister will have to come to the rescue somehow. Whether they can be supplied by the wholesalers or not I do not know, but the wholesalers have the excuse that they have no way of getting to these areas; their petrol is restricted; there are all kinds of restrictions on them. It is better for these wholesalers, I must admit. Cigarettes are not going to the areas to which they should go and it is a matter that should be seriously looked into by the Department. In the Slievardagh mining area of Tipperary there is not a cigarette except those sold singly, even down in the mines, at 2d. each. I know the wholesale association is doing its best at the moment to get some cigarettes for the area. I would like the Department to take note of it.
With regard to the licences which have been revoked and those which are about to be revoked, I would like to stress what every Deputy said yesterday that the way in which it is being done is most unjust and unfair. It would be much better if the Department wiped out every licence in every case of prosecution from the very beginning. It would be no more arbitrary than what the Minister is doing.
The Minister and his Department do not seem to take into account that different district justices take different views. One district justice may impose a heavier fine than another. I do not know on what basis the Minister and his Department go when revoking those licences but certainly, if one man is fined £2 and another is fined 10/-, by different district justices, it does not seem fair that the man who is fined £2 should have his licence revoked, while the man who is fined 10/- has not his licence revoked. In that matter, I think the Minister would need to set up some committee within his own Department, if he does not set up some tribunal to review the whole matter. I would like to stress what Deputy Browne said last night, that you should wipe out the whole thing and begin anew. I do not care how far you go in wiping out licences then, but let the people know what will be done and what they are up against.
In many cases there were more mistakes than deliberate offences. If you go into a shop in the country you may have to knock at the counter and it is not the one member of the family who will attend in every case. They are scarcely doing any business most of the days of the week and some member of the family will run out to attend the customer. The customer asks for a pot of a certain kind of jam or marmalade. No one in the house knows the price of the jam or marmalade of the kind you ask for. It is handed to the customer and the customer pays, say 1/6 for it. The shopkeepers may be bad business people but they have pulled along with the ordinary people all their lives, and what I object to is that somebody to whom credit was given may go along to somebody else and say that that a shopkeeper has charged him so much for a pot of jam or for a quarter of a pound of tea. Then somebody writes to the Department and the shopkeeper is immediately pounced on although there is no deliberate evading of the law.
For those reasons I would ask the Minister to go into all these cases seriously, not to revoke the licence and throw them out of business. Throughout the whole country—I am not certain about Dublin—a number of people dealing in every shop get credit from week to week, from month to month. Sometimes while they are idle they get credit. In my county at the moment they get credit for three weeks before they are paid by the county council for working on the bog. If the shopkeepers' licences are taken away because they have made these mistakes, these people will be crowding to the home assistance officer and trouble will be created for everybody, county councillors, T.D's. and everybody else. In fact—it is hard to say it—this revocation of licences has come on so suddenly and in so few cases out of all the prosecutions that have taken place, that I am afraid it looks as if it is done with an eye to the general election. "What about a few shopkeepers? We will get the crowd of workers behind it." I hope it is not the case but it would make you inclined to think that way.
There is trouble in regard to butter. I think it was referred to by a Deputy from Louth last night. I am living just beside a central creamery where there are nine auxiliaries and even during the past week a number of poor people could not get a pound of butter. I want to draw the Minister's attention to the fact that a number of people in the country do not deal regularly for butter in any shop. That is well known to every Deputy from the country. A number of people were accustomed to getting a pound of butter at the creamery and a pound of butter at a few other places. They did not include butter in their ordinary weekly order as in Dublin. These people are left completely without butter. Until the Minister finds some proper system of distribution, the people who are worst off for butter will not be able to get it. Before I, or any other Deputy, obtain a supply of butter these people should be provided for. On Monday, I saw people who were working in a bog begging their neighbours for half a pound of butter. That is the position in a dairying area and the Minister should find some means of rectifying it.
As regards transport, the Minister seems to have been experimenting since his Ministry was established. Each year, petrol has been getting shorter. He has painted many gloomy pictures for us but it is only now that he has commenced to experiment in connection with gas-producing plants and the fuel for such plants. The man who puts into his car or van or lorry a gas-producing plant is immediately deprived of petrol. A man may have five vehicles. If they are gas-driven, he will find that they are laid up every second day. I do not know whether this happens in order to get rid of the gas-producing plant. Some people will tell you that the gas produced by turf is all right for this purpose while others say that it is no good. I am afraid that even the drivers of some of these cars sit down on the road in order to try to get from their firm a car driven by petrol. The Minister should now, although it is almost too late, use every effort to see that as many vehicles with gas-producing plants are as possible on the road and to see that as much fuel as possible is provided for them. I suggest also that he should find some big motor owners who would train men to drive these cars fitted with gas-producing plants and make them drive them. I am afraid that drivers are doing a lot of harm in that way. It may be that, in many cases, they do not understand the apparatus and are not able to work it, but it is a terrible source of trouble. I suggest also that where a man puts in gas-producing plants, the Minister should not reduce his petrol to the minimum, that he should not be too sparse in his allocation of petrol to him. I urge that because the drivers, not being used to the mechanism or not wanting to use such vehicles while other drivers have petrol-driven vehicles, may not do their job very well. The Minister should give a certain amount of petrol to every firm and make that firm supplement it by the use of gas-producers if the fuel can be found. Between anthracite and peat there should be sufficient fuel. Then, there is a good deal of waste shrubbery and wood which are no use for any other purpose. I hope the Minister will now go the whole way in this connection, but I think he should have experimented before petrol became so scarce.
There are complaints in Tipperary, Clonmel and Cashel with regard to the use of hackney plates. I am afraid that these complaints refer to the Minister's Department. Some men who had not hackney plates later then 1939 have now got hackney plates. They were not dependent for a livelihood on these cars. In one case, a hackney plate was given, I understand, against the advice of the Gárda. Others who live in isolated areas who had hackney plates but were not using their cars in 1941 have been refused plates. I understand that, a few months ago, a man was taken off the road but, after an interview, was put back on the road. His car, however, is broken and is not running. That looks like a little favouritism. If the Minister jogs his memory, I am sure he will recall the case to which I refer.
I desire to refer to Slievardagh coal—not to the mines, but to the supply. In that area, there are short supplies. The Minister cannot get all the coal he wants, but coal has been raised there for years—not a big amount but sufficient for a certain area. I understand that the Minister has ordered prosecutions against those people who are raising and selling coal because this is a turf area. These poor people could not raise the coal, nor could the mining company, at the price which the Minister could give for it. I wonder would the Minister be prepared to subsidise the coal which these people are raising. He is paying a large subsidy on turf. Why not, during the emergency, subsidise the coal which these people raise? For 20 years, they have been raising coal and making their living by distributing it with horses and carts from Templemore to Cahir. The Minister now proposes to prohibit them from doing that because it is against the law to distribute coal in a turf area.
Why does the Minister for Supplies not allow these men to raise all the coal they can and, if necessary, pay a subsidy? Would it not be better to pay a subsidy for the production of coal than to be paying 23/6 a ton for bad turf? In addition, it must be remembered that men are being put out of work. Some of them are old men, but others have horses and carts with which they ply through the country. They are now afraid to raise coal or to sell it, because this is a turf area. Fuel is scarce at the present time. Why not encourage these men to produce it? I hope the Minister will reconsider the matter, because otherwise I foresee poverty amongst many people in that area.